


Ward Below

by WandererRiha



Category: Original - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 14:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WandererRiha/pseuds/WandererRiha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trapped in the tubes, things take a sharp left turn into the surreal.<br/>All the doors are locked, all the trains have stopped.<br/>No one else is down there. There doesn't seem to be anyone above.<br/>What happened? Is he the only one left, or has he just gone mad?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Into The Labyrinth

The catacombs were empty, as they had been when he entered. The endless tunnels of brick and concrete, iron and cinderblock went on and on and on without end, seemingly straight lines stretching for miles only to loop back in on themselves. He was beginning to think of it no longer in terms associated with railroads, of a strictly linear track that went only from Point A to Point B with a couple of lesser stops in between. There was nothing straight about it. There were no right angles, no corners or edges, just loops and bends stretched out so far that they only seemed straight. There was nothing linear here, only a tangled nest of tunnels new and old, snarled together without rhyme or reason like the vaults of an anthill. And yet the tube map insisted on making sense of the whole thing, tried in vain to lay it all out in neat little colored lines that ran parallel to one another. That was all well and good for the more recent stations but England was a big country and the tube ran a long way. The oldest tunnels went back a hundred and ten years or so, in the days when locomotives were still powered by coal and steam and not electricity.

At least the lights were on. The flat fluorescent lamps shone yellow, but comforting, from their rusty sconces in the ceiling. It was nice to return to some semblance of civilization. Posters of recent plays and movies had been pasted to the little recesses in the walls, chocolate and soda sat more or less fresh in the vending machines, and the water in the fountains was cold if flavored strongly with iron and chlorine. Things had been a bit tighter in the old Victorian passages. True, some of them were still used now and aside from the decorative stonework could hardly be recognized as the antiques that they were. Some, however, had only recently been cleaned up and others not at all. Those had been a little eerie. If not for the fact that he knew perfectly well that the whole thing was staged, that he was being filmed and monitored every step of the way except inside the restrooms, he would have been a little afraid. Just a little. They hadn’t given him the cell phone for no reason. He glanced down at the little plastic box with the stubbed antenna and smiled a little at the softly glowing screen. The battery would last for days yet. It wouldn’t take him that long to reach the station, even on foot.

Even though the trains in that area had been shut off, it was still a little disconcerting to walk those huge, unpainted passages of bare, black iron by himself. He knew in his head that the electrical currents had been turned off, but apparently not all of them. He’d seen the rail junctions sparking and fizzing with blue energy in the dim passage lights and had warily kept his distance. Even if it was only a TV stunt, not everything in here was safe. He had to remember that every step he took he walked closer to a cruel prank against his own pride. It was all a set up. He just had to remember that.

His watch, evidently, was in on the joke. He glanced at it every now and again, just to make sure of his speed, to see how long he’d spent in an area. Sometimes minutes had gone by, sometimes hours. It was easy to lose track in the black tunnels that connected one station to the next. He was beginning to think of them as that- the black tunnels- it wasn’t just from a lack of light either. Had they been better lit, he was entirely certain that they would have been black anyway. That was just the color that they were. It made it easier to think about for some reason. Having tunnels that were colored black instead of suffering from a lack of lighting somehow made them easier to walk through. It was like changing channels on TV- going from a color picture to black and white static and back again as the signal returned. The stations were the show and the tunnels were the static. He couldn’t imagine the BBC was filming him in such atrocious lighting anyway. He fancied they must show the commercials then and he smiled to himself at the thought.

 

_“You have two weeks in which to reach your destination, Ward. Your mode of transit will be your own two feet and your only aid will be your wits. You will be given no help, no directions, no assistance whatsoever. You will, however, be provided with some items to help you in your journey._

_“For instance, you will be provided with six glow sticks. You may use them at your convenience but please remember each spent stick will cost you $1,000.00 of your prize money. Also, should you become hopelessly lost or- heaven forbid- injured or incapacitated in some way, you may use this cellular phone. Just push the button and it will automatically dial our broadcast office and we will come down straight away to your rescue. This phone is, however, to be used as a last resort. Should you make use of it, you will forfeit your prize money entirely._

_“For your safety we have cleared the rail tracks and turned off the electricity. We have also temporarily shut off the various tube stations for the duration of the proceedings so that no one will be able to interfere and jeopardize your chances of winning. The lights and emergency beacons will remain on at all times for your convenience and safety. Also, any disused passages or those under repair or construction have been clearly marked and barricaded. Please do not attempt to use those in your journey._

_“You will be filmed, for our judges and audience at home in order to monitor your progress. Please remember, any outside aid will render you disqualified. You have 168 hours. GO!”_

That had been two days ago. It felt longer, but his watch said it was only the 18th. He’d gone down at 8AM on the 16th, down into one of the little-used Victorian hatches and into it’s cheerfully lit yet dilapidated mouth. He couldn’t help feeling a little nervous in its plastered vaults, clean yet just shabby enough to make one wonder. Were they truly safe? Would the wiring in the walls spark and catch fire? Was it kept in decent enough repair to truly function? He supposed it must. After all, the BBC would not have let him down here if it wasn’t safe, right? Right, he told himself. It was a ploy, a deliberate plot to get his fears to work against him. They wanted to see how soon he’d crack. Well, the joke was on them. He wouldn’t crack. He and his friends had often joked that he’d cracked a long time ago, but it wasn’t his sanity that was at issue, it was his nerves.

He didn’t really fear the solidness of British construction. Not really. After all, the tube had stood for this long, hadn’t it? The stones were solid and expertly placed. It hadn’t been built by idiots, but by master craftsmen utilizing the most advanced technology available in their times. Thank God he wasn’t in France, where the tubes in parts of that country shared space with what they called “the passages of the dead”, literal catacombs full of miscellaneous bones all stacked and piled together. Since it was impossible to sort out what belonged to who after a flood had washed the bones into the railways in the early part of the last century, the calcified remains had been built into literal walls and supports. There were notices that read something to the effect of _“WARNING: Beyond this point are the catacombs. Do not enter. If you do, we will not come looking for you. Consider yourself warned.”_ Ward didn’t think he could have dealt with that.

As it was, the various tunnels were almost startlingly boring. The lack of events during his journey of black and that curious, flaking off-white color that the underground stations had been painted was one of virtually unbroken silence. Ward had thought of whistling or humming or even talking to himself initially but soon thought better of it for two reasons: one, because he knew he was being filmed and two, he didn’t like the way his voice resounded off the walls. It only emphasized the lack of humanity.

It was surprisingly easy to get along in the tunnels and stations. There were vending machines all over and while he soon grew tired of the little bits of plastic-wrapped food he didn’t grow hungry. He’d made sure to bring a pocket full of change for the occasion and he still had plenty left. The restrooms were clean and while lacking showers, proved adequate enough. It wasn’t as if he had a fresh change of clothes or a towel to dry off with anyway. The floor or benches were hard and a little cold, but doable. While it took some time to get used to sleeping with the lights on, he was glad they never went out.

Ward was tall and he made sure he had hiked until he could hardly stand before he quit for the day. Pockets full of cheese crackers and chocolate he faced the tunnels as well prepared as it was possible to be. The long dark stretches no longer really bothered him that much. It was all part of the act, part of the show, and he was going to make the viewers suffer for their fun. He was not going to be a cheap thrill. Any surprises or upstarts were subtle and usually handled with grace and competence. They were only little things like a stubborn vending machine (a little pounding had persuaded it) or a locked men’s room (there was no one else around so he finally got to see what the inside of the ladies room looked like- it had been rather unexciting and predictably pink) that were dealt with accordingly. So far he had caught every one of the curves they’d thrown at him. He nearly fumbled one, however, on the sixth night when the lights suddenly and inexplicably went out.

He stopped where he was, dead in his tracks in the middle of the rails at the center of one of the long tunnels. The emergency lights still gleamed a small yet reassuring green along the tunnel walls. He stopped and collected himself for a moment before going on. It was a prank. They were messing with him, trying to freak him out. That was all. Just keep going. And he did. The darkness didn’t truly bother him all that much. He had already decided that the tunnels would be black anyway even if lit by floodlights. They were painted that way for effect. Even if it wasn’t true, it made him feel better and helped him go on without fear. He briefly thought about sacrificing one of the glow sticks when he came to a fork in the tunnel. Holding up his scavenged tube map to one of the weak green lights, he determined he ought to go left instead of right and did so. Stations, tunnels, stations, tunnels, it went that way for hours with only the Christmassy glow of red “EXIT” signs and green tunnel lamps to light his way.

And then those went out too.

The sudden and utter silence of the blackness that had abruptly swallowed up everything including Ward himself made him stop and shiver. The lack of the ever-present background noise of the hum of fluorescent lights and the constant, distant throb of generators suddenly died along with the remaining light, plummeting all into a silent, disorienting void. Slowly, the vague trickle of running water and condensation dripping from cold pipes surrounded by warm air filtered down to his stifled ears followed by the still more distant sighs and moans of the tunnels as they inhaled surface air and exhaled shallow currents of only mildly stagnant warm breath. Kneeling, he took hold of the steel rail track the better to orient himself. They were just trying to psyche him out, that was all. He needn’t sacrifice one of his glow sticks just yet; he still had a path. Ward had paid attention in history class. When one’s sunshine lamp went out in the mines, workers were to find their way back to the surface by tracing the rails for the mule carts back up to the surface. This wasn’t a mine in Wales, mercifully, but the same trick would do quite well. Rising, he kept one foot against the rail at all times, leading himself onward.

It wasn’t until the second day and a three-fingered fork in the rails that he finally snapped one of his precious glow sticks. The prize money wouldn’t do him any good if he got lost and never reached his destination. It would still be a lot of money. Glow sticks only lasted about forty-eight hours, twenty-four as a decent flashlight, and so Ward hurried more than he previously had. Never did he run flat-out, it was entirely too dark for that. Still, he did his best to cover as much distance as possible. He was tall and his long legs slowly yet steadily ate up the miles. He felt like an Angler fish, swimming alone at the bottom of the sea where the only light was his own, suspended before his eyes and glowing softly yellow-green. No prey ever came to him, however. That was probably just as well. Ward wasn’t sure what he would have done had he encountered anyone along the way. So far the tunnels had been devoid of human life. Not even a bum had been found huddled on one of the many benches and he had seen surprisingly few rats. If anyone or anything saw his little light bobbing along through the darkness of the long hole, they must not have been interested.

He had been expecting the electricity to go back on at any minute, for the peevish yellow light to suddenly glare down and half blind him after wallowing in the blackness for so long. Six days and three glow sticks later, nothing had happened. That made thirteen days he’d been down here. His deadline had been fourteen, he’d actually made it in eleven and had spent the last two hoping someone would show up. He hadn’t arrived at the wrong place. The word “FINISH” was printed clear enough in painted letters on the floor and the banner hung on the wall, but the lights were still off and no one was there. He’d tried going up the stairs and into the station but the exit had been barred. Blast doors, meant for a bomb shelter, locked from the outside and too big and heavy to try to maneuver off their hinges blocked his path. Either there really had been a power-out or else this was some sort of twist. It had to be. If the power-out were for real someone would have come down after him. This must be another plot device. It must. They wanted to see him use up the last of his sticks and then press the panic button on his phone. They wanted to see him lose, to see him fail. Ward was many things but he was not a quitter. He could best a couple of BBC execs. After all, there was nothing in the darkness that had not been there in the light. He didn’t need to waste any more glow sticks. He would wait here until they gave up.

Someone must have given ground because two days later, the lights came back on. However, no one showed up. He stayed at the station, busying himself by cleaning up with supplies he found in a broom closet. He ran out of change on the third day and then simply pried the vending machine open. The fallout doors, however, remained impassable. Distantly he wondered if something had gone wrong but refused to think about it. On the seventh day he finally gave up, took out the phone, and pushed the button.

The battery was dead.


	2. Fine Print

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rules have changed. The goal is no longer prize money but escape. Is there in fact a way out of the Underground?

He was supposed to find his own way out. That must be it. At least, he assumed that was the idea. It had been surprisingly easy to survive down here in the tube stations and tunnels, easier than he would have thought, though his stomach was aching for something other than the little pre-wrapped tidbits in the vending machines. He could deal with that. There were hundreds of the little refrigerated boxes; at least he wouldn’t starve. What was also beginning to irk him was that even though he knew where he was, he was profoundly lost. Oh the stations were marked and he was beginning to know some of the tunnels on sight due to the graffiti and mason work or various other architectural giveaways, but that was not the problem. The problem was that not just the finish line had been sealed off. He’d gone back and tried the exit to every station he’d gone past and had started looking into all the others, ticking them off on his map one by one and he was nearly out of registered stops. That would leave him the old unused Victorian tunnels and those passages deliberately blocked off for safety reasons. He began to wonder if the orange cones and “keep away” signs were a ploy as well. He stuck his head into a few of the construction sites since those seemed the least likely to come down on his head. He was met with only abandoned tools and scaffolding, dust beginning to gather on the untouched equipment. Ward began to wonder if this were really a joke or not?

He hadn’t seen a single living thing (unless you counted moths, spiders and the odd rodent) since he entered the tunnels. By his reckoning he’d been down here over a month. No one had come down as far as he could tell. There were no janitors, no conductors, no rail men, no passengers, not even any vagrants. There seemed to be nothing and no one besides him. It was becoming a little disconcerting.

He kept trying to get up into the stations, all of which he found barred or blocked in some way. A few of the older ones seemed to have suffered cave-ins or collapses at some point for piles of bricks and stones, huge and old, blocked the doorways. He wondered if it would be wise to try to dig his way out but the fallen blocks were too big and too heavy to be moved by his bare hands. It would have to be thought about and returned to later. Some of the stations were only blocked by bars or curtains of chain, one of the railway stations on the other side had windows set high in the walls near the ceiling. Pale sunlight filtered down in dusty shafts to the polished tile floor through the grit on the dirty windows in the clearstory high above. The station had been spotless, yet empty. The clock at the far end read 3PM, a high time of traffic for the tubes. However, not a soul showed their face to even wax the floors. All the booths and shops were walled off by the same doors and bars that blocked his passage into the station. Even if he could get past the barrier, evidently he would not be able to get out of the stations. 

Ward began to wonder if something had happened?

The next few nights were uneasy. All exits had proved impassible and therefore utterly useless. He broke open one of the vending machines and used the nickels and dimes inside on every pay phone he could find. He was met with only the empty, staccato beep of a disconnected telephone. He was cut off and completely alone. He tried not to let that bother him. He’d been alone all this time, hadn’t he? At least he had no fear of being attacked. There were positive angles to being alone down here- for one he would not have to go to work and he needn’t worry about keeping up appearances for the BBC. He was quite sure no one was watching him now. If there were cameras still running, the film was playing to a blind audience. He still taped scraps of paper over some of the security lenses that read: “Please come and get me. –Ward”. He was ready to be done with this but in his heart expected no outside aid. No help would come, at least not from the surface. If he was going to get out at all, he would have to do so himself. Tucking the map into his back pocket and as many packs of crackers and beef jerky as he could fit in his hip pockets he struck off down the black tunnels.

It was possibly the longest hike he’d ever taken. He walked quickly, his long legs spurred on by the possibility of escape back into sunlight. He went to sleep on the benches each night aching with exhaustion and awoke stiff but eager to be off. The trains were kept in a station yard and with any luck that yard- indoor or outdoor- would be his passage back to the surface. He knew he’d struck the correct path when the tracks began to slope steadily up and up and he had to use the wooden ties as if they were stairs. No luck. There was no light at the end of this tunnel, only a sealed metal door. Evidently this exit was no longer in use. It figured. Ah well, he had time. There was no rush. He would just try another one. Turning, he began the dark descent back toward the last station. He never bothered with the remaining glow sticks. He didn’t need them as long as the emergency lights shone. They must be conserved in case of another blackout.

He tried several station yards till he was done. Several of the passageways appeared to be blocked just as the first had been. He assumed these must lead to outdoor station yards and therefore had been closed in order to keep out the elements or for some similar reason. Light shone under those doors and fresh currents of air wafted through the cracks. He tried opening them but was again brought up against the limits of human strength. The doors were simply too big and too heavy and most likely chained from the outside.

There were a handful of indoor station yards. Those provided him with a few more vending machines and dead pay phones but that was all. The trains slept silently where they stood, unmanned, unmoving. To make matters more discouraging, every single door was locked and not a person could be seen. The entire tube system seemed to be deserted even though Ward’s brain kept returning to the dim hope that there were people about, but they were all conveniently at a station across the city from where he was. He had only to find them, or an unlocked door, and all would be well. Even though he could never quite believe himself, he tried anyway.

Every station explored, every tunnel combed through, Ward betook himself to a station bench and sat down to think. He’d been over every stretch of track in London including the Victorian tunnels and those marked for construction and condemnation and found nothing. All the phones were dead, all the entrances blocked. He was, essentially, sealed in. Those were all the drawbacks to the situation. The positive aspects were that the lights were on, the water was still running in all the bathrooms with ample soap and towels in all the dispensers, there was still lots of food left in the various vending machines. However, it would not last forever and Ward didn’t fancy living on rats. So his time limit was when his food supply ran out. There were hundreds of machines and only one of him so there was no rush. There wasn’t any need to panic yet. With this in mind and a hot cup of tea settling in his stomach, he lay down and found himself able to sleep.

Some hours later he awoke to deafening roar of metal clacking on metal, the violent rush of wind, and a speeding weight so great that its passage made the station shake. Ward’s cry of alarm was lost in the noise as he jumped and fell off the bench. Wide-eyed in astonishment he sat and gaped as a train sped past, its shape reduced to a white blur with an orange stripe. Once it had passed, its form became a distant light in the tunnel followed by the vague “clackity-clack” of its own wheels. Ward could have cried for joy. The tubes must have opened up again, there would be people coming down soon and he could get out. He checked his watch. 3AM. They must be doing a test run. The morning commuters wouldn’t be down for another two or three hours yet. Too excited to sleep, Ward decided to celebrate by getting cleaned up in the men’s room before the risk of being discovered presented itself. He was getting pretty grungy. His hair- grown out to his shoulders to begin with- was getting really long and embarrassingly curly. He also needed a shave. His green and brown striped T-shirt was unstained as were his blue jeans, but both were getting stiff with sweat and dirt and were beginning to stink. Hopefully he’d be able to wash them later. For now, he settled for washing himself as well as he could at the small porcelain sink. This accomplished, he went back to sleep hoping to be wakened by the trample of human feet.

He awoke some hours later on his own feeling rested for the first time in a long while, if still a bit stiff from the molded bench cushions. Stretching, he checked his watch thinking it must still be early for there was no one yet in the little tube stop. 10AM. Long since past time for the morning commute. Had he missed it? Had he slept through it all? Looking around, Ward rather doubted this. Nothing had been disturbed, the waste bin was no more full nor empty than it had been when he went to sleep. There was no evidence of either restroom having been used, no fresh chewing gum or recently snuffed cigarettes lay on the pavement. No one had come. It occurred to him belatedly that the train had only zoomed passed and had not stopped. Of course. This station wasn’t active yet. It must have pulled in elsewhere. Encouraged, Ward grabbed a bag of pretzels and set off down the tracks, listening carefully for the roar of an approaching locomotive.


	3. Allies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ward discovers he isn't alone after all.  
> He thinks.

He didn’t see the train again, not for several days at least. Time was becoming a little mushy down in the tunnels where hours didn’t matter and it was difficult to distinguish night from day. The only light came from the square suns of the fluorescent lights in the ceilings of the tube stops, the only darkness in the black tunnels where little stars of green and blue and red glittered in perfectly straight, horizontal constellations. It was a world within a world, really, and Ward was beginning to think he was the last man in it.

He tried making himself a calendar out of the little square tiles covering the walls, marking off the days with a marker he’d found in one of the broom closets. He soon gave up, however. Somehow, it made things more bearable if he didn’t know how long he’d been down here. Ward learned not to care about days and weeks and months and when the battery in his watch died, he learned to stop caring about hours as well. He ate when he was hungry and slept when he was tired. There was no time. There was only him and the tunnels and somewhere the train. 

He saw it go by once or twice again, but never did it stop. He walked along the tracks without fear. For some reason, he was quite sure the train would not run him over. For one thing, it seemed to be only a single train that was running. At least, the one he saw bore the same number (11) and the same orange stripe. As far as he could tell, that was the only engine in service.

Much to his amazement, it did stop one day. Ward had been standing on the platform, debating with himself if he should go to the right or the left when it pulled in, drowning the platform in noise and wind. The doors slid open and Ward, after taking a brief moment to gape in bewilderment, hurriedly stepped through before they could close and the train thunder away again. No sooner had he boarded than it took off again, nearly throwing him off his feet. Glancing around, the carriage was entirely empty. Not even a newspaper lay discarded on the seat. Walking to the end of the car he peered through the window. The adjoining carriage appeared completely vacant, as did the one after it. Upon examining the window at the other end it seemed to Ward that the entire train was deserted with the exception of himself as the only passenger. With nothing else to do, he chose a seat and sat down.

The train sped along, the tunnel walls passing too quickly for him to mark them visually. Still, he knew more or less where the train was headed. He was becoming quite well acquainted with the tube system after hiking through most of it for the past…he wasn’t even sure how long, weeks, at least, possibly months. Not that it mattered. He sat and watched the lights and stations fly by.

“Next stop approaching, next stop!” 

Ward jumped and nearly fell out of his seat. Turning, he beheld a man in a conductor’s uniform with a thick brown moustache and gold-rimmed reading glasses.

“Next stop!” the Conductor hollered as if the train were crowded with passengers. He turned and faced Ward as if noticing him for the first time.

“Is this next stop yours, young man? If it isn’t, you’ve got a long ride ahead of you. We won’t be stopping for hours.”

Ward could only gape stupidly, unable to utter a word. The Conductor did not wait for him to answer but continued down to the next carriage calling out “next stop” all the while as if Ward were not the only other person on the entire train. Not knowing what else to do, when the train stopped, Ward got off. It rushed away again, stray papers and lightweight junk twirling in the wake of its wind.

He was alone again.

That was all right. At least now he knew there was someone else down here, someone who knew the rails and ran the trains. Next time he’d have to ask the Conductor what was going on. If anyone were likely to know, it would be the Conductor. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else around to ask anyway. Ward resolved that the next time the train stopped, he would be there to get on.

Ward saw the train go by a couple of times. Its appearances were few and far between. He could not guess just how long the gaps of time were- time had become a rather fluid phenomenon to Ward- but even to him the stretches seemed lengthy. He managed to board whenever it stopped but either the Conductor was not present or he would not let Ward get a word in. Strangely the bespectacled man seemed to anticipate what Ward had intended to say, though not always with the utmost accuracy. It was a somewhat one-sided relationship, but Ward considered the Conductor an ally if not a comrade. At least, he knew he had nothing to fear from him. He seemed dotty, but not dangerous.

One of the hardest things to do in the tubes was laundry. Ward had been doing all right spot bathing at the sinks in the men’s room and so was not having a problem keeping himself clean though his hair was getting long and his chin growing scruffy. His clothes, however, could have stood up by themselves and even the laziest university boy would have thought twice about wearing them. He’d learned to wash things in turn- socks and underwear one day, shirt and jeans another. It was tiresome but he made do. Eventually he got tired of cycling things and the uncomfortable sensation of wearing a rather stiff pair of blue jeans and nothing else. He was neither brave nor immodest enough to roam naked even though he was fairly sure there was no one around to see him. Besides, being completely undressed would necessitate standing until his clothes were dry and that might take hours. It was the only thing that made him impatient, waiting for the danged things to dry, particularly the thick fabric of his denim trousers. During that time he usually busied himself either sleeping or tidying up the tube stop.

The only form of cloth available were the rolling towels found in a few of the older restrooms. Ward disconnected the loop of old and stained cotton, ripped the seam apart, scrubbed the daylights out of it, waited for it to dry, and then wrapped it around his middle as a sort of loincloth. His reflection in the mirror made him smirk and think of Greek adventure movies with stop-motion hydras and Minotaurs. He had to admit he did look something like an uncombed Persius despite his best attempts at keeping his hair under control. He supposed it didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if he had anyone down here to impress.

Since he was- as far as he could tell- the only one down in the tubes besides the Conductor, Ward had taken it upon himself to act as custodian to whatever station he found himself in. There was a janitor’s closet in every one, none of them locked, and he would make use of whatever he found there. The tunnels were beginning to become dull and dingy with dust and neglect and the decay made them seem creepy and threatening. Ward didn’t want that and so began doing what he could for the tunnels. He would sweep, mop, scrub, dust and polish. He would have painted too if he’d had any paint, some of the un-tiled walls were in desperate need of a touch-up. A lot of the tiles had come loose on some of the older stops and with a bottle of glue whose stench made him light-headed as he stuck them back on. Ward reflected that the stations had probably not been this well cared for in years. It made him smile with a sense of satisfaction and pride. It wasn’t a monumental task, but it gave him the feeling that he’d accomplished something. He hadn’t noticed that up until then he’d been slowly becoming rather bored.

One day- Ward called it “day”, any time he was awake he considered it to be daytime- Ward was thus dressed and thus engaged cleaning up the tube stop while waiting for his jeans to dry when the train pulled up. He was reluctant to leave his clothes and go running about the tubes in an improvised loincloth but thought he might at least stick his head in and call out to the Conductor. It wasn’t often he had a chance for company. Laying his broom aside he went over to the train as it briefly paused to rest. The door slid open and Ward was forced to take a step back. Four, five, no six men, all walking in a close cluster trooped past him. Ward stood back amazed not only by the sudden presence of so many other human beings, but at their strangeness. They were all young men like him, the oldest certainly not more than thirty. All of them had long, untamed hair much like his own and were shirtless, clad only in jeans and tennis shoes of varying color and raggedness. They didn’t appear to see or hear him, but that could have been because of the noise were making. Ward didn’t recognize it for what it was immediately; it had been so long since he had heard anything but his own sparse words and those of the Conductor. The men were not humming precisely, nor were they singing. Instead they shuffled and stomped their own rhythm, improvising wordless, vocal accompaniment as they saw fit.

Before he had a chance to speak a word to them they were gone, heading up the stairs towards the railway station. Ward attempted to follow them but they turned off one of the side ramps that led down towards the other side of the tracks. Ward hurried after them but they disappeared down the stairs ahead of him. When he descended to the opposite platform they were gone. Where they had vanished to he had no idea, all he saw was the station he’d just been at, empty as the one he stood upon. The strange troupe of singing men had gone.


	4. Within

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

He saw them every now and again; the train, the Conductor, and the Troupe as he’d come to call them. They were the closest he had in the way of neighbors. It was impossible to guess when or where he would see them and there was no way to measure the length of time between sightings. That’s all they were, really, sightings. Sometimes the Conductor might hail him with a greeting or instructions, occasionally members of the Troupe would offer a “good day” and a warning, but Ward never got a chance to say anything in response. Either he was too busy being thunderstruck or was never allowed him to get a word in. It was all right. He really didn’t mind. As random as the encounters were, he was glad of them. At least he knew he wasn’t the only one down here. He wasn’t completely alone. There were times, however, when he wondered if he wasn’t imagining his strange visitors. It wasn’t until he rode the train through the darkening tunnels or watched as the Troupe shuffled past that he knew he wasn’t dreaming the entire thing. However, the knowledge that his subterranean adventure was real began to press on Ward.

How long he had been down here he could not say. Long enough for his hair to grow down past his shoulders in embarrassingly curly waves, long enough for his chin to grow scruffy but not yet enough for him to have sprouted an earnest beard. His tennis shoes were nearly worn through and so were the knees of his trousers. While Ward was more than familiar with the tunnels by this time, he did not relish the thought of wandering around barefoot. His modest clothing was not the only thing wearing thin. Several of the vending machines were beginning to look sparse. Some of the more perishable items such as the cream-filled cookies had begun not to go bad but to disintegrate. Ward supposed they had dried out as opposed to going stale. He didn’t bother to open any more of the shiny little blue packages after that. His provisions were running out. Ward realized that he’d been unconsciously entertaining the hope that he would, eventually, be rescued. After all this time, that was not likely to happen. He wondered dimly what had happened on the surface that no one had come looking for him?

The other grim prospect revealed itself just as Ward was settling down to sleep. For no readily apparent reason the fluorescent lights of the station flickered and died. The bulbs had not simply burned out, the power had been cut. The sudden silence, thick and palpable as a black velvet curtain, was suffocating. Ward found himself chilled more by the lack of sound than he had ever been by the inaudible white noise of the hum of the light fixtures and subtle sigh of the tubes as they breathed the increasingly warm air in and out of their concrete throats. Ward, who knew exactly where he was, decided to stay and get some rest regardless of how eerie the station suddenly seemed. Upon waking he discovered the tube stop was still dark. The tri-colored emergency lights, however, were still glowing and he followed them through the tunnels until he came across a platform that was still alight. Once there, he made himself some tea and sat down to think.

The lights had gone out once before, back when he was being filmed for the television game show. He had thought then that it was part of the prank, meant to make him panic and act a fool in front of a national audience. He wondered now if that power-out had not held some further significance. Perhaps he and his strange companions really were the only ones left alive? Or perhaps the tubes had been shut down for some reason? That second option seemed more likely, though Ward could not invent a plausible reason for this. A pest infestation? No, he’d scarcely seen a cockroach much less a rat in all his adventures. Repairs? Unlikely. The only repairs being conducted were the ones Ward had done himself. He considered the possibility of mold or methane or some other air-borne health hazard but negated the idea since he was feeling just fine. Rather than dwell on what could have happened to necessitate the tubes shutting down (this was the explanation he’d decided on), Ward reluctantly turned his mind to other unpleasant possibilities.

As long as the generators- wherever they were- still ran, there would be power. Ward remembered having to memorize ridiculous statistics and calculations in elementary school about things like how long people could survive in a bomb shelter, how much food and water they would need, and how long a generator would last. Granted the generators that ran the tubes were huge industrial beasts meant to easily provide power for hundreds of miles of tunnel and over sixty trains and carriages for London alone and would last a long time, but they would not last forever. As far as Ward knew, there was only one functioning train and several of the stations and tunnels were permanently dark, mostly the older Victorian runs that were no longer in use and those that had been under repair when he first started on this absurd quest. Ward decided that if he ever got the prize money he was demanding double the amount and using half to purchase an automobile. He was _never_ taking the tubes again. That was, of course, assuming he ever got back above ground. But that did not solve the problem of what he was going to do when the lights went out. And they would, eventually, go out. There were three glow sticks left, but he doubted the chemicals inside were any good after all this time. He knew there was nothing in the dark that had not been there while the lights were on, but he still didn’t like the idea of being closed in on all sides by soundless black. Eventually, even the pretty pinpoints of the red, green, and blue emergency lights would fail as well and he would be utterly surrounded by oblivion. Ward didn’t like the thought of that at all.

He must, he decided, try to discover where the Conductor and the Troupe went once they were out of sight. He had to talk to them or follow them. Granted he’d been trying for ages to speak with or trail the Troupe but with no success. No matter how long he managed to keep up with them eventually he lost them as they went up or down a flight of stairs, around a corner, or through a tunnel. Still, they were his best hope. The Troupe usually consisted of anywhere from five to seven men, not all of them the same ones that had appeared the last time. Ward counted at least eleven different faces all told and at least twice as many outfits between them. The Troupe, apparently, had access to a change of clothes though the garments seemed to be in no better shape than Ward’s. What puzzled him most was their apparent stash of props. Usually they wandered by empty-handed but he had never gotten over the time they had tromped past each playing a band instrument. Ward had only been able to stare goggle-eyed as a Sousaphone, a glockenspiel, a trumpet, a trombone, a saxophone, a clarinet, and a piccolo had wandered by blaring some sort of tuneless melody that made the light fixtures shake. Ward would have liked to go with them but apparently they had no room for another trombone player. It’d been ages since Ward had gotten the thing out of its case, but if it meant company, he would have gladly tried his hand. It didn’t seem as if the Troupe was terribly interested in harmonizing anyway. He would have to find them again. There was no other way he knew of to learn their trick of survival.

Ward spent several “days” searching for the Troupe but only stumbled across scattered members. This in itself was strange because until this point they had always appeared in a group of at least three. He could only imagine why individual members popped up alone and unaccompanied. What further struck him was that these solitary members didn’t seem surprised by him at all. Rather, they almost seemed as if they had been looking for _him_. At least, they always passed on some useful if cryptic bit of information. One instance that stuck in Ward’s head was when, about to go up a particularly dark flight of steps, one of the Troupe members came tripping down out of the shadows, briefly laid hold of his arm and said “Don’t go up there, it’s bloody dark!” before releasing him and boarding the train that had suddenly appeared. Ward had tried to follow but the doors had already closed and the train pulled away. He glanced back at the dark passage, eying it nervously. The shadows seemed more menacing somehow. Perhaps it would be wiser to heed the advice of the singular Troupe member. Whatever was up there, Ward decided he didn’t really want to find out. Instead he took one of the “Caution: Wet Floor” signs from the broom closet and stuck it below the archway of the passage. That would remind him not to go up there. He hurried on after the train, unwilling to stay near that doorway any longer than strictly necessary.

The curious thing was that wet floor signs began to appear in other places blocking different entryways. Ward could only conclude that the Troupe had picked up on his marker system and was purposely placing the things before passages that were not safe to use. Some were set down in the midst of the tunnels but most of them, oddly, were set before the stairs leading up into the tube stations. Apparently it wasn’t safe to venture even that far above ground. Ward, however, had stopped going up some time ago. He liked the vast and empty expanse of the now dust-covered railway stations with their closed marquis and stacks of unread newspapers even less than the horizontal nights and days of the tunnels. The railway stations were supposed to be alive and noisy with activity, but they weren’t. Ward half expected to see dust bunnies blow across the unswept marble floors like tumble weeds in a Western film. The tunnels, however, were supposed to be vacant of humanity and so it bothered him less to be the only one down there. He didn’t try going topside again.

Six more segments of the tunnels had suffered blackouts. Ward kept a mental tally of which stops and passageways had plunged into darkness. Evidently there was a grid and each section of the tubes had its own generator to provide power. It didn’t exactly come as a surprise when an entire corner became lost to the blackness. He’d rather expected to lose chunks at a time like that. However, there was no way to predict which corner would go next. Ward had anticipated that the remaining Victorian tunnels- seldom used and probably powered by a much older model than the more recent stretches of vaulted concrete- might be the first to go. Oddly, one of the more modern corners was lost first, the lights in the old Victorian station still burning brightly in cheerful defiance of their age. Ward smiled at them.

Although he’d had a few scattered sightings of individual Troupe members, it had been some time since he’d seen the train. It was therefore something of a surprise when, while waiting for his clothes to dry, the Conductor wandered up sans train and bid him hello.

“Oy there! Just the man I was looking for,” the Conductor hailed him cheerfully. Despite the fact that he knew perfectly well that no one else was there, Ward caught himself looking around for another person. The Conductor couldn’t possibly be talking to him.

“I say old man, would you mind giving me a hand? Got some electrical work that needs tending to or else it’ll be dark as the underside of a rock at the bottom of the sea, if you take my meaning. It’s a two man job so come along and we’ll get to it, what?”

Ward would have liked to ask “what” indeed, but found himself being ushered along towards a door marked “authorized personnel only”. It had been locked but the Conductor opened it without even producing a key. Ward blinked but entered at the Conductor’s bidding.

“Now, watch your step lad, this is all war vintage, the first war that is. The rigging’s a bit rickety but still quite solid, just mind your footing and you’ll be fine.” The Conductor called back over his shoulder.

Ward couldn’t help being slightly overwhelmed by the sudden flood of information. Also, he hadn’t imagined there was this much superstructure to the tubes. He and the Conductor were now wandering through a narrow service space between the outer brick and concrete vaults of the tube tunnels. Thick bunches of wires and rusted pipes ran up and down the steeply curved sides of the passage, apparently part of the electrical and heating and cooling systems. The air in this between space was stiflingly hot, however, making him feel more than a little claustrophobic at being _inside_ the tubes in this overly literal sense.

“Now,” the Conductor stopped for a moment and handed him an electric torch, “what we want is to reconnect some of the plugs running up towards the ceiling. I’ll be doing the actual hooking in, but I need you to feed the cables up to me. We’ll both have a fair bit of climbing but you look like an able lad so you shouldn’t have the least bit of worry.”

Ward contemplated the sudden chasm of empty space they’d come to as the tubes on either side diverged at opposing angles, leaving a pentagonal hollow of complete and utter darkness yawning before them. Bare light bulbs housed in little metal cages hung here and there, providing the only light besides their torches. The ambiance was little indeed and reflected terracotta red from the brick of the tube walls hedged thickly in black shadows. That combined with the dank air, almost too warm and thick to breathe, made Ward feel uncomfortably as if he were looking down into the mouth of Hell. Rusty old ladders slick with moisture from the humidity in the air ran up and away into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling above. Wires and pipes and hanging gangways of planks and ladder rungs hung suspended in space, crisscrossing the chasm. Who in their right mind would have designed something like this on purpose? Ward swallowed on the knot in this throat, a sick feeling beginning as it hit his stomach with the disquieting feeling that he and the Conductor would be going up there. Several thick, rubber-coated cables led up and around from that yawning void towards the ceiling. It was those that the Conductor ushered him up one of the slippery, rusty ladders, torch in hand, to reclaim. Ward had never had occasion to be afraid of heights but scrambling along on those rickety, rusty gangways, trying to hold a torch in one hand, cables in the other, and still maintain his balance as well as his modesty in his improvised loincloth was just too much. The hot, damp air beading moisture on his bare skin now combined with his own perspiration made things that much more difficult. The Conductor, however, seemed to be having no problem at all and flitted from one dizzying, swinging perch to another with the lightness and ease of a circus acrobat. Ward was hideously glad when at last he was allowed to climb down. That generator would run for a good long while yet. Ward hoped he would not have to help repair any others.

The question never did come up, for which Ward was profoundly grateful. He assumed correctly that the generator he’d been drafted to help fix was indeed the one that kept the Victorian tunnels alight. The other tunnels began to go dark one by one as the generators powering their grids began to die. There was little food left in the vending machines and even less of that was fit to be eaten. Pretzels and potato crisps were about the only items fit for consumption, everything else having dried into salty or sugary bits of colored dust. Ward began to wonder if this was what the underground palaces in the Valley of the Kings had felt like to the servants, buried alive with their dead masters. Ward didn’t feel as if he’d been buried but was starting to feel as if he were wandering a tomb, the wall hieroglyphs and sarcophagi the only details lacking. He briefly thought about embellishing some of the tunnel walls with chalk and marker but decided against it. Soon enough he wouldn’t be able to appreciate it anyway.

He could have gone wandering in the darkened tunnels. The truth was, he had no reason to. There was nothing to be afraid of; there was nothing there, and that was why he didn’t set out down the remaining corridors lit by dots of blue, red, and green. He’d watched the train zoom past just once more, but that had been ages ago, shortly after fixing the generator. That was the last time he’d seen either the Conductor or his train. Ward honestly didn’t expect to see them again. With little food left and permanent “night” approaching, he had few options. Panic didn’t seem like a productive course to take and so Ward thought quietly, the teabag in his improvised cup of hot water brewing thoughtfully in his hand. Ward appreciated the effort, but didn’t put much faith in the mental prowess of a teabag. Still, it was better than nothing.

A shuffling noise began at the far end of the tunnel. Ward sat up a little straighter and squinted, straining his eyes to pick out shapes in the darkness. The uneven mass of shadows finally emerged into the flickering lights of the old tube stop. Eleven young men trudged forward, their chests bare, hair long and wild, blue jeans and tennis shoes every bit as ratty as his own. Forgetting his tea, Ward scrambled to his feet and hopped down onto the tracks, blocking their way.

“Oy, mate!” one of them hailed him, stepping ahead of the group slightly and raising a hand in greeting. The man was about as tall as Ward, though thicker and more solidly built, his dark hair hanging stringy and untamed in his blue eyes. Ward could never be sure what, but something marked this man as the leader. Unafraid yet suddenly tongue-tied, Ward returned the gesture, unsure what to say. He needn’t have worried. The leader spoke up for him.

“You with us, then?”

Ward nodded. “Yes.”

“Come on then.”

The leader strode ahead a few paces, the rest of the Troupe following until they surrounded Ward on every side. His shirt already tucked into the back of his trousers due to the heat that was collecting in the tunnels from a lack of ventilation, Ward felt a sort of strange kinship with the other men if only for the fact that they were all shirtless. He worried briefly about losing track of them but shouldn’t have. The men on either side of him each put a hand on his shoulder and the fellows behind him did the same. Thus hedged in and guided, Ward stepped forward with them into the darkness of the tunnels. He noted abstractly that a “wet floor” sign stood collapsed and kicked to one side right below where his cup of tea sat forgotten on the platform. He paid them no mind. He was one of the Troupe now. Even as the blackness swallowed them up, the warm pressure of hands on his shoulders and the dim shuffle of sneakered steps on every side remained. Regardless of what they might find in the darkness, he would not face it alone.

Behind them, the lights went out.


End file.
